More fishing and a mountain twitch

Murphy's Glen

We've not managed to do anything too much out of the ordinary in recent times but we have been able to fit in a couple of fishing trips to Botany Bay and obviously we're still getting up the hill as much as we can.

Cracking big Bream

Botany Bay is teeming with little fish and the action is consistent if not spectacular but last outing Emily managed to catch a proper fish. As it was clearly spending it's time swimming round a major container port we didn't think it was a very good idea to take it home for tea though.

Living room window birdstrike - Parrot-style

The weekend before last I received word that there were a load of Pilotbirds in a place called Murphy's Glen up in the Blue Mountains. After consulting a map I found that this campsite and walking trail are actually in Woodford only 7km from my in-laws' place. How had this escaped me for all these years? Anyway, what better place to base oneself for a bit of a twitch. On arriving in the area I found a patch of bush that had just been given a bit of the hazard reduction burn treatment. This meant that there was no understorey and so the usually skulking birds should be visible. It took a while but after getting excited by a couple of Whipbirds I was eventually able to track down two Pilotbirds #480 amongst the charred landscape. Even then they were perfectly silent and I almost missed them.

Pilotbird

Way back in November 2006 I was birding up in the rainforests round Gosford with Dave and he managed to get onto a Pilotbird which I missed. He's had that over me for the best part of 10 years. Not anymore!

On Saturday I hope to add another one to the list with the most outrageous twitch yet. It's time to go crazy for once so Emily and I are going to travel 1900km in an attempt to bag a vagrant that's just blown in from America. It better still be there when we arrive on Sunday morning...!